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Jim Salter, AP
A crude new method of making methamphetamine poses a risk even to Americans who never get anywhere near the drug. It is filling hospitals with thousands of uninsured burn patients requiring millions of dollars in advanced treatment — a burden so costly that it's contributing to the closure of some burn units.

(AP) — Shares of Intuitive Surgical, Inc. retreated from all-time highs Friday on what two analysts called disappointment over the number of procedures performed with the company's da Vinci robotic surgical system in the fourth quarter. Intuitive Surgical reported its quarterly results after the market closed on Thursday, showing its profit and revenue beat analyst estimates, and with strong forecasts for 2012.

Don Babwin, AP
Dante Autullo was sure he'd merely cut himself with a nail gun while building a shed, and thought doctors were joking when they told him what an X-ray revealed: A 3-1/4" nail was lodged in the middle of his brain.
Autullo was recovering Friday after undergoing surgery at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Illinois, where doctors removed the nail that came within millimeters of the part of the brain that controlls motor function.

Margie Mason, AP
At 10:25 a.m., a dark brown eye was removed from a man whose lids had closed for the last time. Five hours later, the orb was staring up at the ceiling from a stainless steel tray in an operating room with two blind patients — both waiting to give it a second life.
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(AP) — A Turkish doctor whose 25-member team performed the world's first triple limb transplant — two arms and a leg — says the leg has been removed due to tissue incompatibility.
Dr. Omer Ozkan stated that 34-year-old Atilla Kavdir is in stable condition after the removal of the leg on Sunday, a day after it was attached.

Medications or biologic agents that target T-cells appear to offer significant benefit to patients suffering from psoriatic arthritis (PsA), a type of arthritis that affects up to 48 percent of patients with the skin disease psoriasis, according to a new review article in the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS).

Shortages of key drugs used to fight infections represent a public health emergency and can put patients at risk, according to a review published in Clinical Infectious Diseases and available online. Frequent anti-infective shortages can substantially alter clinical care and may lead to worse outcomes for patients, particularly as the development of new anti-infectives has slowed and the prevalence of multidrug-resistant pathogens is increasing.

(AP) — One of the world's smallest surviving babies is headed home.
Melinda Star Guido weighed only 9.5 ounces at birth— less than a can of soda. After spending her early months in the neo-natal intensive care unit, a team of doctors and nurses will gather Friday to see her off.
Melinda has been growing steadily and gaining weight since she was born premature, at 24 weeks, in August at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

David Bauder, AP
A routine news story took a strange turn when an ABC Nightline anchor had a full body scan that turned up a possible warning sign. Bill Weir was interviewing Dr. David Agus, who gave him a full series of tests. That included a costly body scan that's not recommended for screening people with no symptoms of disease.

(PRNewswire) Some people may be going under the knife to alter their appearance, with more saying they would do so if cost weren't an issue. A new survey from CouponCabin.com reports that nearly one-in-four U.S. adults (23 percent) said they would get plastic surgery if cost were not an issue. Women were more likely than men to indicate this, at 28 and 18 percent respectively.

(PRNewswire) New findings from a research study led by physicians at Scripps Health reveal that the investigational drug Cangrelor has the unique properties of achieving very fast blood thinning effects when needed to protect from heart attacks, but also dissipates rapidly so patients can undergo surgery without the excessive bleeding often associated with blood thinning medications.

(PRNewswire-USNewswire) Researchers at the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering, backed by funding from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, are developing tools that promise powerful new ways to combat catheter-based and other infections without provoking bacterial resistance to antibiotics.

(AP) — Police say a man tried to rob a western Pennsylvania gambling parlor by threatening to spread a staph infection.
He walked into Lucky's Internet Cafe on Monday night and began touching the walls and gambling machines, claiming he had MRSA.
Sharon police Chief Mike Menster says the man then threatened to infect the cashier if he didn't give him money.

Kevin Begos &
Matt Moore, AP
The parents of a three-year-old New Jersey girl say she's being denied a kidney transplant because of her mental disabilities, but experts caution the situation may be much more complex.
The girl's mother, Chrissy Rivera, last week posted a blog entry that described an encounter she claimed happened at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

A new surgical technique for treating perforations of the tympanic membrane (eardrum) in children and adults has been developed at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Center, an affiliate of the Université de Montreal, by Dr. Issam Saliba. The new technique, which is as effective as traditional surgery and far less expensive, can be performed in 20 minutes at an outpatient clinic during a routine visit to an ENT specialist.